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Topic: E-mail client recommendations (Read 21603 times)

I'm liking Spicebird (it's been mentioned on DC a few times).Based on Mozilla code, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi about it that I like very much, where I disliked Thunderbird for the same (read: nebulous) reasons.Handles multiple accounts pretty well, and setup is 5-year-old-level easy.

That said, there are a few nits about it, like not being able to use T-bird extensions, that would probably not please some people.

To me, probably the most critical feature of an offline email client is the quality of the stored content. That's what makes the Bat awesome: it's not likely to screw up the files holding all the emails. The program is quirky, but you can be fairly sure those emails are going to stay with you for a long time. I have emails in there stored since 1996, no problem. Crashes, blues screens, all sorts of migrations, etc...everything still stays perfectly intact.That, plus great multiple account interface makes it in a class of its own. That's why I stick to it despite all my constant bitching about the quirks. i won't even sniff another client without that kind of rock-solid backend or multiple account features.

I'm liking Spicebird (it's been mentioned on DC a few times).Based on Mozilla code, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi about it that I like very much, where I disliked Thunderbird for the same (read: nebulous) reasons.Handles multiple accounts pretty well, and setup is 5-year-old-level easy.

Just downloaded it to give it a try. I do like it better than TBird, and am also having a problem saying exactly why. Maybe it's because it feels lighter and smoother in some indefinable way compared to "the bird"?

Handles IMAP very nicely. And to your point, setup is a breeze. Gave it a Gmail account and password and it handled all the server settings for me. Nice! A few seconds later it synced a good number of folders and messages and still felt light and snappy afterwards

Hmm...gonna have to feed it for a week or two and then decide if it's allowed to stay.

One thing that keeps me using Mulberry is its "Cabinets" feature. I use sieve filters to filter my mail on my two university accounts into a variety of mailboxes, depending on various criteria. I have a Mulberry cabinet that shows me just the mailboxes that are able to receive new mail, so I can see at a glance which mailboxes have new mail. Mail in some mailboxes I know I want to look at right away, whereas others can wait. When I use Thunderbird, I have to scroll through my MANY mailboxes to find which ones have new mail, and I find that rather inconvenient. I also have a cabinet that holds just those mailboxes that I want to synchronize with mailboxes on my computer. With IMAP, I don't have to download messages, but I have 18 mailboxes whose contents I want to save on my hard drive. Mulberry's Auto-Synchronize cabinet makes it very easy to do this. Yet another cabinet I use is Copy Messages To. It simply lists all the mailboxes in which I might want to move a message after reading it. I haven't found this "cabinet" functionality in other email clients. It's not the only reason I stay with Mulberry, but it's one that I really don't want to give up. If there are more modern email clients that do have a similar feature, I'd like to know about them.

Late to the thread, but I have to throw my hat into The Bat!'s ring for one simple reason: 33,000 emails. If you can find any other email client that can handle that many emails without slowing to a crawl or even down-right imploding I'm listening. Seriously.

Diva, I don't know if The Bat! mimics the Cabinet functionality well enough for you to take a look at it or not. There's a tab view that will only show you unread messages in your email accounts. There are configurable Virtual Folders that allow you to use powerful filters to show only the messages in the accounts/folders that match your criteria. Finally, there's a powerful filtering technology that allows you to manipulate/copy/move/delete any email anywhere by matching (or not matching) countless criteria. This powerful mail filtering technology is also harnessed for use in the creation of your virtual folders as well.

I've never used Cabinets, but Virtual Folders sounds similar to what you are asking for.

Late to the thread, but I have to throw my hat into The Bat!'s ring for one simple reason: 33,000 emails. If you can find any other email client that can handle that many emails without slowing to a crawl or even down-right imploding I'm listening. Seriously.

Becky! from Rimarts can handle that easily. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that The Bat! has, but it's been my sole email client for over a decade. My install currently handles 22 accounts with a mix of IMAP, POP3 and NNTP along with several hundreds of thousands of messages across them. One of my most favourite apps ever.

Another vote for M2. For me, how fast I can compose an email from anywhere is key. I have a single-key shortcut in opera that does that. E-mail integrated in the browser is pure win, was never able to do this with gmail.

I liked Opera M2 for its "one box, virtual folders for on the fly classification" approach, but it would get slow after a certain size (i have years of email) and didn't support tags the way I would like. I need to revisit it though as there are many new versions since I last used it.

You should definitely revisit it. In the latest versions of Opera, the mail client is operating much faster with a large mailbase. The email database loads independently -after- Opera has started, so browser startup itself is a lot better with a lot of mail.

I also really like Postbox, especially as gmail is my primary email provider. Postbox's gmail support integration is by far the best I've seen.

I did, and you're right! It is much faster, it now also has more flexibility around tags, and it also allows to look at the imap mailboxes with folders, the traditional way, should you want to move things at the server level (incidentally that fixes another annoyance I had with M2, that when you moved an email on the server you ended up with duplicate copies in M2)

I also really like Postbox, especially as gmail is my primary email provider. Postbox's gmail support integration is by far the best I've seen.

Postbox has some nice touches that make it very efficient for every day email. It's only weakness is weakness on the contact front. I can easily live with a todo list or calendar that is not linked to my email, but contact information is something one needs when dealing with email. I'm looking into using memotoo/funambol synchronisation for thunderbird with postbox, will see how it goes

(a warning on things like funambol, memotoo, gist, nimble, plaxo sync etc.: add things one at a time, prepare for a lot of manual sync/clean duplicates and data/sync/clean duplicates and data cycles - less each time. Also, be very very careful sync'ing contact with gmail 1)if you have ever imported in the past a list into gmail, you'll get duplicates and b)it now adds all your G+ circles as contacts, and they get sync'd too. my phone is full of one-word contacts, grrr!)

@Tuxman:And a "power user" also knows how to auto forward messages for one account to another account, making a mess with rules and whatnot, I'll admit, but it would be possible.

Ok, more serious now. What about FoxMail? I have used that in the past with several mail accounts and it worked quite well. In some areas actually better than Thunderbird some years back. It is still around and remained free as well.

If you can get over its Chinese roots (which is noticeable in the English translations on the website), it is a decent email client.

About 300,000 of those are donationcoder forum alert emails -- i have written before about how i use emails as a low-tech backup system (in addition to the other redundant backup systems in place on DC) -- anytime a post is made, the post is emailed to me.

About 300,000 of those are donationcoder forum alert emails -- i have written before about how i use emails as a low-tech backup system (in addition to the other redundant backup systems in place on DC) -- anytime a post is made, the post is emailed to me.

About 300,000 of those are donationcoder forum alert emails -- i have written before about how i use emails as a low-tech backup system (in addition to the other redundant backup systems in place on DC) -- anytime a post is made, the post is emailed to me.

About 300,000 of those are donationcoder forum alert emails -- i have written before about how i use emails as a low-tech backup system (in addition to the other redundant backup systems in place on DC) -- anytime a post is made, the post is emailed to me.